Arctic has the do-or-die chops to affirm Mikkelsen’s rugged allure, as well as its young filmmaker’s sensitive-showman promise.

Ducournau’s follow-up to “Raw” is more than comfortable in its genre trappings, offering grab bag nods to past masters and positively delighting in sex, violence and grisly prosthetics as it chants “Long live the new flesh” from the film world’s toniest perch, inviting all gathered to join along.

This new DC entry has a lovely lightness, both in the visuals and in its tone.

Any movie that reminds you, simultaneously and favorably, of Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation and Michael Mann’s Thief is doing something very right — even if it looms a lot lower than those towering works of genius.

The filmmakers let the story slither at its own rhythm, so that the magnitude of the psychological control can be fully exposed. To accomplish that, their superb cast guides the film through a poisonous doctrine taken not from the pages of imagination but from real American folklore.

Though the ending leaves most narrative loose ends untied, there’s a nurturing wisdom Link acquires from those he meets over the course of the ever-spontaneous journey. Plenty remains unsolved, but he knows himself as a person more than ever before.

End of the Tour refrains from depicting the process of writing, but what it has to say about the act of creation, not to mention the act of talking about it to an interviewer, is rich and fascinating.

Ultimately, Crazy Rich Asians doesn’t need to subvert all its predictable elements, because even if we know where it’s going, we’ve never seen that story told this way.

Cannan and Adam approach the outlandish crime as a puzzlement, all but wondering aloud how two celebrities could be stolen from public life and turned into a dictator’s puppets.

Halston is at its most naturally energetic when highlighting career triumphs. It’s packed with archival footage remembering past glamour, and moving contemporary interviews with models like Pat Cleveland, whose own ascendance in the fashion world as one of the first African American models to make a name for herself, went hand in hand with Halston’s paradigm shift.

At nearly two and a half hours, it’s designed to test your patience for the things that matter in these movies — violent confrontation, deception, jokey camaraderie, and over-the-top action — but it does so with a remarkably re-engaged fluidity of purpose.

Hoffman doesn't get a lot of flashy, awards-show-clip moments, but he's all the more engrossing for underplaying and revealing volumes with the slightest of reactions and inflections.

It’s What’s Inside understands the concept of sympathy, but with people like this, the movie advises against it.

Kim’s not interested in tidy resolution, and has a strong affinity for missed connections between people who know each other very well. That’s the greatest strength of Lovesong.

It’s Jones who really shines. She effortlessly embodies Ruth Bader Ginsburg with such aplomb that when she locks her steely eyes with the camera, you can feel it in your bones that this woman is about to change the world.

Especially in a year so devoid of serious female-led dramas, it's invigorating to see a feminist crowd-pleaser with the force of moral righteousness on its side. But Big Eyes is good, not great. What keeps it from excellence is its reluctance to explore the very questions it raises.

Every detail, be they the mirthful jokes or the melancholic meditations it taps into, comes together to create a vision that’s existentially resonant. It proves Boonbunchachoke is not just an exciting new voice who pays respect to the ghosts of cinema’s past, but one who finds distinct beauty as he brings them all to joyous life.

Hillsong — Let Hope Rise stands out against that harsh tone of much recent Christian indie cinema by being a winning, friendly, and at times moving film.

Days after watching the movie, I still have some reservations about how abuse is shown in the film, but it’s hauntingly effective. I haven’t been able to shake those images since.

It’s Prince, though, who lifts the movie into another realm. It’s no exaggeration to say that hers is one of the most noteworthy child performances in recent — or, for that matter, distant — memory. She is so charismatic, and so unfailingly natural, that every one of her scenes feels organic.

It's a film that takes its characters and their crises seriously, allowing them to fully explore their situation before providing them (and the audience) a genuine roadmap for finding their way through.

Changing the Game is that rare documentary about a social issue that is not preaching to the choir. If someone is uncertain or on the fence about this issue, this movie should allow them to make a logical conclusion about it, and that is not only a positive thing but also a stimulating one.

A fascinating deconstruction of history, culture, and identity, No Ordinary Man raises so many crucial questions — and answers them so thoughtfully — that it moves beyond entertainment into the realm of essential text. It belongs, equally, in theaters, streaming queues, and classrooms.

Glorious, angry, hilarious, nail-biting fun from a director, writer and cast who all know exactly what they’re doing, and relish in the fact that they’re practically getting away with murder.

At its best, Bad Axe is a family portrait, dynamic and curious and funny. It’s to Siev’s benefit that he belongs to one of the most charismatic families of all time, whose unending curiosity in each other and their respective wellbeing keeps the engine chugging along.

It wouldn’t be a Western if it didn’t include some kind of showdown, and “The Dead Don’t Hurt” gives us one that is bloody and satisfying without being what you’d expect. Mortensen twists the tropes until the end.

With bleak serenity of a man who has peered into the abyss and responded with a smile, the filmmaker offers no answer or easy way out to the intractable, and perhaps foundational, human capacity for hate than with his own virtuosic talent.

It’s Klein at his most conservatively verité and least pointedly judgmental — he was a fan of the game and setting, after all — but he still offers up a tapestry of personalities, playing and performing that captures what is ineffably beautiful and edgy about tennis, at a time when it was as popular as it had ever been.